Americas (English Edition)

Articles from Vol. 43, No. 5-6, September-October

Snow-capped mountains surround the Argentine village of San Martin de los Andes, where architect Daniel Rubinger pursues an unusual hobby after long hours at the office:license-plate collecting. Clear across the other side of Argentina, near the...

From the mappaemundi to the Ptolemaic grid, maps have been both mirrors and catalysts of their times THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GEOGRAPHER Hulsius once wrote, "Maps may be called the light or eye of history." It is in this role, as the primary documents...

IT WAS AN INCONGRUOUS SCENE: the lobby of a hotel on the shores of Lake Champlain, the aloof, button-down reserve of New England suddenly violated by six figures in black, some wielding violin cases. Shades of Coppola and Scorcese? An offer you can't...

"Fica um pouco de seu queixo no queixo da sua filha. A bit of your chin remains in the chin of your daughter." Alex Flemming is both quoting Brazilian poet Carlos Drumond de Andrade and explaining the nature of his work. Stretched out behind him is...

JOSE LUIS CUEVAS, born in Mexico City in 1933, works in lithography and woodcuts, paints with oil, acrylic and water colors, creates sculpture, is a Sunday writer and occasionally even acts. Through it all, however, he remains obsessively devoted to...

We were flying toward Hato Pinero, an hacienda located between the plains of the Orinoco in central Venezuela and the Caribbean mountain range to the north. From the airplane we looked down over the magical hill country of El Baul, where prehistoric...

IN 1576 DIEGO GARCIA DE PALACIO wrote to the King of Spain telling of a discovery he had made.... "Near here, on the road to the city of San Pedro, in the first town within the province of Honduras, called Copan, are certain ruins and vestiges of...

WITH EXTRAORDINARY SENSITIVITY and a unique technique, Deborah Turbeville has reached beyond the realm of immediate reality to capture the imperceivable. Few photographers have had such an original and personal vision. Over the past twenty years she...

WHAT COULD A CORRUGATED box factory in Dominica, a pharmaceutical plant in Costa Rica, a bauxite extraction facility in Jamaica and a luxury hotel in the U.S. Virgin Islands possibly have in common? Besides creating jobs and pumping cash into the Caribbean...

I LOVE MY HUSBAND. From morning to night. Scarcely awake, I offer him coffee. He sighs, exhausted by his usual poor night's sleep, and begins to shave. I knock on his door three times, lest his coffee get cold. He grunts in anger and I clamor in distress....

THE DOORBELL RANG: three short rings and one long one. That was the signal, and I got up, annoyed and a little frightened; it could be them, and then again, maybe not; at these ungodly hours of the night it could be a trap. I opened the door expecting...

The story "In Memoriam, Amanda" has a curious genesis. I had heard it told a number of times in Spain, about the poet Juan Ramon Jimenez, but from sources both wispy and unverifiable. I decided that it should best become a "fiction," that form much...

It is a rule of thumb as old as the music business itself: When musicians themselves begin to talk about the arrival of a new talent, listen carefully. The people who spend their waking hours planning how to capture the public's attention through music...

Upon the interruption of the democratic process in Haiti the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Ambassador Joao Clemente Baena Soares, immediately convoked the Permanent Council of the Organization to set in motion the legal...

THE SEXUAL PROWESS of Porfirio Rubirosa, international playboy par excellence and sometime-diplomat from the Dominican Republic, is the stuff of legends. His innumerable liaisons from Evita Peron to Joan Collins and his mind-boggling incredible techniques...

In the wake of World War II, statesmen in the Western Hemisphere focused on how to avoid a repetition of two evils that threatened the world, particularly the West: another totalitarian movement and human rights violations on a massive scale. In...

Since the early 1950s, world-touring Latin American musicians have returned home to the Western Hemisphere with rave reviews of their reception in the Orient, particularly Japan. By the 1970s, Japanese fascination with tropical sounds reached a fever...

DON DAMIAN, with a temperature of almost 104, passed into a coma. His soul felt extremely uncomfortable, almost as if it were being roasted alive; therefore it began to withdraw, gathering itself into his heart. The soul had an infinite number of tentacles,...

ONCE SPURNED AS A STEPCHILD OF EUROPE, Latin American fiction is now considered one of the most dynamic, innovative, and vibrant literary forces in the West. The influence of the Latin American "new narrative" has not been confined to the Spanish-and...

I CAME TO SEE YOU, Martin, and you are not here. I am sitting on the front step of your house, leaning against your door, and I think that in some place in the city, as if by a sound wave that passes through the air, you should know that I am here....

Early in the morning the maiden aunt had taken her rocking chair out onto the porch facing the canefields, as she always did whenever she woke up with the urge to make a doll. As a young woman, she had often bathed in the river, but one day when the...

Fronting a busy highway yet hidden from view by a high concrete wall, the residence at 45 Viena Street looks like any other in the neighborhood, with its vine-covered, old-world arches and red-brick construction. Its last occupant is what sets this...

Mexico's history of conquest and gold dates back over 400 years. But this coming February, Mexican athletes will carve out another piece of history as they strive for the Olympic gold in Albertville, France. Although a highly visible team in the...